Epic fields of wheat and barley separate the dirt road where Glen Turner died in a burst of gunfire and the farm where Alaine Anderson is feeding a rescued koala that, without her help, will not survive.
“If we can save these koalas and their habitat, then Glen’s death will not be in vain," says Anderson. "His children can know that his life counted for something very important.”
She respected Turner, the compliance officer from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage who was shot in the back on Tuesday evening, allegedly murdered when he confronted 79-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull about excessive land clearing on his family’s properties at Croppa Creek, north of Moree. Turnbull’s family has described a man pushed to the edge by his court battles over native vegetation laws.
Lionel and Alaine Anderson have been on their Croppa Creek farm for almost 35 years. Like Turnbull, they are broad-acre farmers of wheat and barley. But they have also preserved much of the remnant brigalow and belah woodlands that are critical to the northern koala and other endangered species, and, they say, to the health of their farm. Alaine is a volunteer koala carer for the WIRES wildlife rescue service.
“After this awful week,” she says, “I want the koala to become a symbol of healing in our community.”
The Moree Plains Shire needs some healing. “Violence was always going to happen,” mayor Katrina Humphries ventured on Wednesday. A toxic well of anger, she says, has built up between environmentalists, governments, miners and farmers, and on multiple fronts: coal seam gas, water rights, the NSW Native Vegetation Act and restrictions on what farmers can do with their own land.
The federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has weighed in to say farmers overwhelmingly hate the vegetation laws. But much of the tension is between farmers and farmers, not farmers and blow-in greenies or bureaucrats. Sometimes it is between the smaller family farms and the bigger “agribusinesses”. Some dare to dob in neighbours for illegal clearing.
In two extreme cases, farmers who insist upon anonymity say their cars, fences and gates have been vandalised. One's ute has been rammed with a bulldozer and his phone line has been cut. A neighbour has trespassed by sending in a gang with earth-moving machines to clear remnant woodlands; they have bulldozed Crown access roads and farmed over them. “It’s like a bad western movie,” they say.
Some Moree locals are angry, though, about the mayor’s assessment of a tragedy waiting to happen. Cafe owner Shane Brooker says: "The feedback I’m getting from customers – and that includes some prominent farmers – is it makes us look like rednecks. We understand the Native Vegetation Act can be harsh, but I haven’t spoken to anyone today who thought it was inevitably going to lead to violence."
Humphries responds: “No one, but no one, is condoning what’s happened, but my goal is to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We can’t stick our heads in the sand and pretend there isn’t a problem because there bloody is. I’m fed up to the back teeth with politicians who won’t stand up and talk about this … We’ve all got some blood on our hands. We’ve all known this has been an issue for quite some time, and it’s not been addressed.”
Turner had been threatened previously. “I’m not frightened,” he told a local. But he was frustrated at having too few resources to prosecute land clearers over a vast swathe of NSW. Croppa Creek was a hot spot.
Last month, the Northern Inland Council for the Environment wrote to Environment Minister Rob Stokes to complain about the “failure” to enforce the law against farms run by Turnbull’s family.
In late June, the Office of Environment and Heritage launched a Land and Environment Court prosecution against Turnbull and his grandson Cory for clearing on the younger man’s farm Strathdoon. Ian Turnbull had already pleaded guilty to clearing on his son Grant’s neighbouring farm Colorado. On Thursday, a bulldozer on Colorado worked on multiple piles of felled trees, all set ablaze. On Friday, the court upheld the family’s appeals to reduce the extent of remediation work ordered on both farms.
The mayor wants the killing extricated from a broader public discussion, but she says the pendulum has swung too far against farmers’ rights. The state government is already in the process of swinging it back with plans to allow farmers self-assessment for routine and low-impact clearing. Environmental officers fear this will only make enforcement harder and embolden flagrant land clearers.
Turner had something in common with his alleged killer. He was a farmer. He grew up on a farm. He enjoyed his property near Tamworth with his wife Alison, 10-year-old daughter Alexandra and nine-year-old son Jack. The Moree Koala Group has established a fund to help his family.
“The northern koala is almost finished,” says Anderson. “If we can prevent that, Glen will not have died in vain. Otherwise he’s just collateral damage, and I will not have that.”
